The Dark in the Rise
by luceserlin
Summary: Ben's face looked so old. So shocked. So absent. There was no time to try to catch even one of the words he might have been thinking. Odala wasn't sure how observant she was, but laying on a metal bridge seemed to cloud her observations even further. She had no idea if the others had left, if someone was behind her, or if the entire ship was burning out.


_A/N: I watched The Force Awakens on opening night, and when it ended I didn't want to leave. I'm used to watching them all, back to back, and to finally have nothing to go for after the ending of a Star Wars movie seems so surreal. There is something about Star Wars that has made so many people before us write thousands of words on their stories. We've spent so many hours imagining and working on the Star Wars universe, that it seems like we actually live there._

 _This is my little attempt at discovering Kylo Ren._

 _If you like it, I'd love to read your suggestions, comments and words of motivation in your reviews :) Thanks so much!_

* * *

She wasn't sure if it was she who'd screamed.

For a second, she couldn't remember or place the sound as ever coming from her mouth.

It didn't matter, because Chewbacca was straight ahead of her, his gurgling so loud it almost seemed like the spears he was maniacally shooting were making the noise instead. On the railing on top of her, she could hear the screams of the girl and Finn, but they were getting farther away, and she couldn't understand their words either way.

She wasn't sure, either, if it was actually her who was moving her feet, one in front of the other in a pace she'd never used, or if something was moving _her._ It didn't matter. Ahead of her – _only meters–_ she could still see Han Solo falling to a pit so slowly, time seemed to be mocking him. She'd never allowed anyone to mock her, and perhaps if she ran she'd reach him.

In seconds, she'd walked what he had walked slowly only a minute before. It didn't seem to matter that Kylo Ren was pulling a spear out of his leg, looking blankly ahead as though unbelieving of his surroundings. Saber still in hand and apparently impervious to her steps, he was standing completely still in the middle of the metal bridge, when Odala yelled:

 _"YOU SON OF A SOW!"_

She'd never ignited a lightsaber, but at the very moment she reached him, the one in her hand glowed purple, and she hurled her arm at Kylo Ren's head.

It seemed like his arm moved autonomously to block her–effortlessly–, because his body still lay rooted to where he'd stabbed his father. His eyes moved quickly across her clumsy moves, and to her face: he blocked every single one of her feeble pilot swishes. Suddenly, Odala flinched at a blast behind her, digging her own fingernails into her palms in an effort to grab save lightsaber. Her foot dug into a hole in the bridge's making, and she stepped wrongly when she tried to get it out.

For a split second she wobbled, and for a split second her brain allowed her to see the face of Kylo Ren. She recognized it, but vaguely. It was as though Han Solo had held her brain in his hand at his fall, and her rationale and memories were slipping away with him.

She hooked her fingers with the floor as she fell. She lifted her arm in a pathetic attempt to bar his swishes, but it didn't seem like his saber could touch her at all.

He didn't need to look at his hand or his lightsaber to strike at her. Instead, his eyes were precisely at her nose when he swayed his saber to the left with only one hand, and brought it straight at Odala's fallen body.

His face reminded Odala of the old man who'd sit near her house, vacant and ghoulish, and scare her with only the look of his sunken eyes. There was nothing else the seconds could concentrate on. Inside the ship there were no other sounds, or trees to listen to in the wind, but his hair still somehow managed to sway slightly to the left, moving as though tiny floating humans were blowing on it.

Ben's face looked so _old_. So shocked. So absent.

There was no time to try to catch even one of the words he might have been thinking. Odala wasn't sure how observant she was, but laying on a metal bridge seemed to cloud her observations even further. She had no idea if the others had left, if someone was behind her, or if the entire ship was burning out.

She screamed again, and again could not identify it as her purple light shook aimlessly–stupidly– in front of her, but somehow miraculously the red shooting weapon never touched her. She attempted to stand, but was caught by her own curling fingers in the railing and stumbled again–

With a swift second, he gripped her right wrist, lifted it, and she lost her own grip on the saber. He pulled her arm violently:

 _"YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!"_ he finally roared to her face.

Kylo Ren raised his crossguarded lightsaber, and then brought it down at her so quickly, Odala's head went black before he even reached her chest.


End file.
